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Abstract
Cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) offers many industrial, agricultural, and medicinal applications, but is commonly threatened by the gray mold disease caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea. With few effective control measures currently available, the use of beneficial rhizobacteria represents a promising biocontrol avenue for cannabis. To counter disease development, plants rely on a complex network of inducible defense pathways, allowing them to respond locally and systemically to pathogens attacks. In this study, we present the first attempt to control gray mold in cannabis using beneficial rhizobacteria, and the first investigation of cannabis defense responses at the molecular level. Four promising Pseudomonas (LBUM223 and WCS417r) and Bacillus strains (LBUM279 and LBUM979) were applied as single or combined root treatments to cannabis seedlings, which were subsequently infected by B. cinerea. Symptoms were recorded and the expression of eight putative defense genes was monitored in leaves by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The rhizobacteria did not significantly control gray mold and all infected leaves were necrotic after a week, regardless of the treatment. Similarly, no systemic activation of putative cannabis defense genes was reported, neither triggered by the pathogen nor by the rhizobacteria. However, this work identified five putative defense genes (ERF1, HEL, PAL, PR1, and PR2) that were strongly and sustainably induced locally at B. cinerea’s infection sites, as well as two stably expressed reference genes (TIP41 and APT1) in cannabis. These markers will be useful in future researches exploring cannabis defense pathways.
Highlights
The cannabis plant, Cannabis sativa L., is an annual herbaceous plant belonging to the Cannabaceae family
To assess the biocontrol ability of four beneficial rhizobacteria against B. cinerea, young cannabis plants were sown in a growth chamber and received different bacteria-priming root treatments
Plants primed with LBUM979 + WCS417r or with LBUM223 were relatively exempt of symptoms, displaying only chlorotic halos at most, while control plants and plants primed with LBUM279 + LBUM223 displayed the strongest symptoms with most infected leaves covered by lesions
Summary
The cannabis plant, Cannabis sativa L., is an annual herbaceous plant belonging to the Cannabaceae family. Domesticated in Central Asia thousands of years ago, its great ecological range and its interaction with humans have allowed it to spread throughout the world as cultivated and wild populations (Lynch et al, 2016). The female inflorescences of cannabis are covered with. Expression of Defense Responses in Cannabis glandular trichomes containing numerous aromatic secondary metabolites, including terpenes and phytocannabinoids. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the main psychoactive compound and its dry mass content is used to discriminate between marijuana cultivars (cultivated for psychoactive/medicinal substances) and hemp cultivars (cultivated for fibers, seeds and oil) with an arbitrary threshold of 0.3% (Small and Cronquist, 1976). As legislations allowing marijuana use evolve around the world, hemp cultivation is drawing more attention to produce non-psychoactive medicinal substances (Conant et al, 2017). Despite its multi-billion dollar worth to one of the fastest growing industries in North America, this plant remains poorly understood compared to other economically important crops, mainly because of its legal constraints (Vergara et al, 2016)
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